Lathezilla II

This is my ornamental lathe, Lathezilla II. I built this for my Friend Charlie Kragle. His is pretty, mine looks similar, but works almost every day. I first saw a rose engine 8 years ago at Gorst Duplessis’s home in New Orleans. I then had to have one. I have about 500# of spare parts from this venture. There will be at least one more version later this year. I’m designing some changes in the layout and framework to make it mroe versatile. Mine is powered by a powermatic variable speed motor, capable of (hold on) almost 10 RPMs. But the best work is done at 2.5 RPM. The cutter spins at 30,000 and uses tiny triangular blades. i also have other cutters, dremel, a powercrafter adapter and several routers for her.The 25 disc patterns turn out over 100 patterns on wood, plastic, metal and anything else I can get in front of her.

Excellent work Eddie,I love a bit of ornamental turning & this aptly named beast looks upto just about anything a creative mind could conjure!I would like to build one myself but my micro-shop is already bursting at the seams…

-- "Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible." ~ Frank Zappa

Very nice cap’n, I see what it does, although closer pictures and more of them would be cool. I’d like to make one for doing stone. I was just at the stone show in Orlando, and sat down with a salesrep looking at a cnc job that started at 375,000 for doing same thing in stone. Of course, it was 8 times bigger for doing columns, and was made to handle water, grit from shaping, etc. but it essentially did the same thing. Very good job on making this.

Fantastic work. I’ve admired some ornamental work done on an ancient rose engine lathe,. Your cool contraption gives some appreciation for what it takes to make these patterns a reality. Very interesting post and pictures. Thanks, Richard

-- "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it...It's the hard that makes it great."

Very nice. I’ve always been fasinated by ornamental lathes (Rose Engine) and think I’ll build one when I retire. I’ve seen quite a few on the web but would love to see more details of yours as it looks much more stout than some and I would presume it would chatter less. Maybe we can convince you to blog it.Thanks